If you're from the global anomaly that is Rome, it's a given that your creative expressions are heavily tied up in your surroundings. Heaving with monuments, excavated ruins and staggeringly complete obelisks, the city produces jewellery designs that are invariably infused with an ancient aesthetic. Historically, the empire offers rich pickings for those looking for inspiration - after all, this is the civilisation that invented the hoop earring, the cameo, the signet ring and everyone's current favourite, the ear-cuff.

Advertisement

Roman-born London-based designer Benedetta Dubini has fused past and present with her antique-coin jewellery, mimicking a technique used by the Romans with ancient money set into wearable gems. Inspired by her mother's jewellery of the 1980s and regular trips to the British Museum to study Roman artefacts, her pieces are a pleasing mix of old and new. Dubini chooses to leave the coins, which she sources through a London dealer, untouched, the aged-bronze patina in her chunky pendants contrasting with bullet-cut cabochon gems.

Another jeweller fascinated by the Romans is Spaniard Inés Nieto, also a regular at the British Museum. Her Inesiene pieces are like precious archaeological finds, as if lifted from the soil but rendered with today's contemporary refinement. Her Amphora pendant is a Greco-Roman vase in jewelled miniature and her frequent referencing of the snake, in coiling earrings and rings, mirrors the Roman motif; they believed a snake's ability to shed its skin represented rebirth and immortality. The cameo, an Ancient Roman technique of carving into the surface of a stone, which was so popular during the Georgian and Victorian periods (and then so resolutely out of fashion), is experiencing a mini revival. Pomellato's Eva ring shows a serpent in positive relief, the hand-carved shell sitting within its rose-gold mount like an antique signet ring, a perfect encapsulation of the Roman trend. Hemmerle follows its usual treasure-hunting instincts, setting a cameo of King George II dressed as an emperor in a tasselled sautoir.

And finally to Bulgari, evangelical in its devotion to Rome, and rightly so; no jeweller-city hook-up has proved so creatively fruitful. Its new Diva collection is a nod to the fan-shaped tiles in the Caracalla thermal baths. It seems the city's creative pool won't be drying up any time soon.